In the early days, 40 years ago, when personal computing started, the lines were blurry. And Notions mission is about software tool-making. Even if those tools just look like black-and-not-quite-white document editors at first. Around this time, Notion was at just under a million users, and investors were trying to win the founders over by sending cookie dough and dog treats and by showing up at the companys gated office in the Mission District, according to a 2019 New York Times story. Eclipsing one million users, Notion (which bills itself as the missing half of Slack) is becoming one of the more interesting and unique productivity tools around. Those early ideas are really pure. Location. Its not trying to be everything to everyone, Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said of the software. Join Facebook to connect with Ivan Zhao and others you may know. The company declined to disclose its revenue, but said it had made money since 2018. Mr. Kothari said Notion could have easily raised more than $50 million, but that amount gives the company at least 10 years of financing to operate. Zhao: We think tools should mimic the way peoples brains work. When people have all their essential work tools in one place and are able to work there seamlessly together with their team, they get more done, they save a huge amount of time, their thinking is more clear and consistent, and project work flows more smoothly. I almost never had that feeling before, Zhao remembers. 2. They need to do pixels, they need to do UX, they need to at least be able to code React. So for a company like Notion, we dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute. Specifically, ChatGPT and Microsoft's new version of Bing have gotten a lot of attention. Read More Contact Ivan Zaho's Phone Number and Email Last Update 1/12/2023 1:37 AM Email i***@makenotion.com Engage via Email Contact Number (***) ***-**** Engage via Phone Mobile Number (***) ***-**** Engage via Mobile Company Notion Test Drive ZoomInfo's Directories He and Zhao met every six months or so, sharing insights and suggesting possible employees. It can be a product that is as powerful as those five different SaaS tools. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion can't be contained in any single decade. Ivan Zhao is on Facebook. I love understanding decision making frameworks, both from a technical perspective (such as algorithmic decision making) and from a . You distill from something not in the circular place you are living but look in a plane outside of what you are working. Front-end stuff you can be taught, its not that hard, right? What did I sign up for? I think the first project was to redesign how people eat ramen noodles. The present comes from the past. Zhao and one of his early Notion colleagues were members of a small scene of people passionate about visually oriented programming environments who followed each other on Twitter, sharing projects and insights. Theyd just laid off their only colleagues. For two years, Kothari did all kinds of jobs, built out playbooks and hired leaders to run the new teams, before moving on to the next business need. By all accounts, the mad dash in Kyoto paid off. Ivan Zhao is the co-founder of Notion. Try to be conservative. She feels strongly about cocktails and NPR. I reached out on a whim, he said. It set itself apart from competitorswhich also include Dropbox, Atlassian and Oraclethrough a growing set of clever, built-for-purpose templates such as to-do lists, product roadmaps and client databases. Zhao was uninterested in school in Beijing, preferring to focus on manga and movies. New Zealand Ivan Zhao Managing Director Guangzhou. Joint/Adjunct . Zhao chose Inkling instead. Zhao Liying was born on 16th October 1987 in Langfang, Hebei Provice of China into a middle class family. In 2015, Notion co-founders Simon Last and Ivan Zhao had removed from their lives anything that wasnt writing code and eating noodles. Today, seven years after that sweaty, exciting time in Kyoto, Last and Zhao are back in San Francisco and Notion is working as an all-in-one collaborative productivity software. One of the lucky ones is Notion, a workplace productivity start-up based in San Francisco, whose tools help people organize and track their work. Is this the simplest mental model we can use? In this interview, we talked about the early days of building Notion and creating a community of passionate users, how he uses Notion in his personal life, the influence of Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart on Notion's design, and much more. Megan was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism; and her methods have helped more than 7,000 people tell stories in front of more than 100,000 people. The best way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization. How far along is Notion on its journey? Zhao refers to overhead fluorescent lighting as hell. He chose all the furniture and finishes, putting as much thought into the offices as he has into the product. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. Participate They neednt have worried, and they havent spent it. April 1, 2020. www.nytimes.com. Engelbart conceived of computers as a way to increase humanitys capacity to solve complex problems, not to just run computations, which was the bulk of computer work at the time. In San Francisco, while Zhao still believed he was right about his grand vision, he realized he was wrong about his market. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion San Francisco, California, United States 7K followers 500+ connections Join to view profile Notion Company Website Activity I spent most of my 2022 planning my. Study some history of computing stuff or pioneers of the seventies or sixties. Someone with little experience can quickly customize using modules like linked databases, task boards, customer queries, and wiki pages. A collaborative canvas to work on anything from anywhere. By early last year, Notion had nearly one million users. Lastly, theres a lot of transparency that comes from storing all your knowledge, information and work in one place that your entire team can see and access. Its like, everybody can be a designer. Most people, he reasoned, wake up and want to use their computers to browse the internet, to write or to solve a work problem. By the start of the pandemic, Notion had about 40 employees and theyd raised about $50 million as an insurance policy against pandemic uncertainty, says Kothari. Notions co-founders are growing an enduring business by nurturing the creative community. MetaLab said it used Notion to present work to clients and to collect their feedback all in one place, among other tasks. I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere, he says. Within three years, Kothari had sold Pulse to LinkedIn for $90 million, and Zhao had started Notion. Im betting on that most people can create their own tools. In a perfect world, Zhao sees the next iteration of Notion as changing life as profoundly as the iPhone changed peoples personal and work habits. These men saw computers as a way to help humans be more imaginative, more creative, more capable of leveraging intelligence in ways not yet imagined. When you look there you can only see a little bit in front of you. It shared a bathroom with a coffee shop, so Last would go in the coffee shop and come out via the bathroom into the bar. Ivan Zhao started Notion, a productivity software start-up that has made money since 2018, in 2013. Zhao remembers the day when he suddenly started making money from it in $.99 cent increments. Bio. And its flexibility can be used by project managers, productivity superfans, recruiters, executives, product teamspretty much anyone who needs to use computers to get things done (but cant code). 3,234 Followers, 1,367 Following, 180 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) Ivan Zhao, the founder of Notion, has created a tool that is remarkably unique: It helps users gain clarity and be more productive in their work - yet each one can design a unique workspace that's tailored to his or her needs. Id never had a guest come to the office and touch the tables, and appreciate the quality of the leather of the chairs. Just dream of a piece of software, and you should just be able to build that using Notion.. But somewhere during her high school days, she became increasingly interested in a career in films and TV. We shook hands, [I had to show] I am not a crazy person.. What are you betting on? Its easier to correct this [and move faster] if you know both disciplines. Zhao: In Notion, you can create multiple layers of tasks so that its possible for everyone to see everyones tasks team-wide at the top level, and then drill down into individuals tasks at the most granular level. Tag them by department, assign them to specific people, even give them due dates if you want. Zhao compares this to how, prior to the spread of literacy with the invention of the printing press around 1440, only clergy and scribes could read and write, so the rest of the population never composed great works of literature, soul-stirring poetry or world-changing scientific research. You need master level of UX and pixel-perfect design. Adding another person doesnt necessarily give you a higher-quality Moby Dick. It doesnt even necessarily make it faster.. Get the Notion Mastery Course*: https://bit.ly/3rNMSRD Discover Notion here: https://bit.ly/3Ammn9B Get Notion templates from Easlo: https://gum. Go to the edge of what is still acceptable to your peers and go to the far, far edge of that. Then from there, the tool that people used to think and work is Microsoft Office and it was one monolithic tool, maybe with a suite of different programs. Ivan Zhao: Tools that let you work the way your brain works. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion Labs. He was kind enough to take it, Kothari says. Read More Contact Ivan Zaho's Phone Number and Email Last Update 1/12/2023 1:37 AM Email i***@makenotion.com Engage via Email Contact Number Engage via Phone Mobile Number Engage via Mobile Company Notion Address Because the investments we made there allowed us to build Notion in a way that it could serve the teenagers using Notion for their use cases all the way to big enterprises using it.. Over the years, Kothari rose through the ranks at LinkedIn, becoming vice president of product and moving to Indias tech center, Bengaluru, to help run LinkedIn India as it expanded. What was your inspiration or motivation for thinking around this? 111 Tw Alexander Dr. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709. The killer feature is that it is what you make of it.. Frey: Whats the origin story of Notion? Jani Zhao was born on the 19th of October, 1992. Notion has hired seven salespeople, who will not be able to visit clients in person while social distancing is in effect. Ivan Zhao Make-Up Department + Add or change photo on IMDbPro Contribute to IMDb. Ivan Zhao - Systems Engineer and Support Lead - Recreational Services | LinkedIn Ivan Zhao Good person with cybersecurity personality for life Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand 303 followers 300. What do you think is going to happen with digital products? We wanted to create a space that was as distraction-free as humanly possible. Notion addresses both by making communication in the product more about utility allowing people to collaborate on the same pages at the same time, and to have very targeted asynchronous conversations about specific work (using comments and discussions). Instead, they found a small group of really die-hard fans that carried the product with them. He. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion cant be contained in any single decade. Notion gives you a birds eye view of everything your team is working on and then lets you drill down into the smallest details if and when you want. Congcong Pei, Yu Zeng, Liang Zhao, Jing Zhao, Jingjing Wan. They dont write hyper-specific code to do a clever, unique thing an individual person wants to do. Its more about UX. In this conversation, Jason talks with Notion's CEO, Ivan Zhao, about what the new AI features mean, and how they might just fu Show Undigital Podcast, Ep An Interview with Notion's CEO Ivan Zhao - Feb 22, 2023 The more you can encourage people to share, and the more you can coax ideas and information out of their heads, the better off your team will be long-term. Inside Design: How would you recommend designers start learning about the philosophical underpinnings that guide your thinking? Kothari was born and raised in Ahmedabad, a city of 8 million in Indias western Gujarat state. Sequoia led Notions 2021 round of $250 million. Since last May, its users have organized more than 180 meet-ups in 21 countries and 52 cities. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html. And we want to do this in a way that will help people think more clearly and collaborate with each other better. The first version of Notion was a tool that non-coders could use to make their own apps. We were just, code, code, code. All unified, it keeps your teams together, and keeps your thoughts together. The company is hiring for about 75 more positions. At that time, they declined to meet any venture capitalists or discuss acquiring a higher valuation.. Zhao remembers sneaking Last into a nearby bar, the Trick Dog. Their plan involved asking the famed entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant, who had invested in Notion early, to wake up at midnight, when the new days list opened, and to tweet to his followers to vote for Notion on Product Hunt. Now, our skin is fairly conservative too. You can be a designer. About four months ago, CEO Ivan Zhao moved his 25-strong team from another Mission office to this new, "secret" location wedged among residences along a tree-lined street. And I was like, This sounds amazing,, The investments we made there allowed us to build Notion in a way that it could serve the teenagers using Notion for their use cases all the way to big enterprises using it., In the next 5 to 10 years, Notion could be the front-end infrastructure for the world. Other startups are working to build out similar capabilities; in 2021, Google Workplace added something like Notions interconnectivity with the launch of Smart Canvas, and Microsoft has done the same for 365 with its Fluid Framework upgrade. Erin Griffith. In March 2016, after the year in Kyoto testing iterations of Notions functionality and design, endlessly pulling up pages on the design software Figma, Zhao editing in one area, Last finessing elsewhere, they launched Notion 1.0. We recently interviewed him to learn the origin story of Notion, and to get his take on the evolving nature of work today and how his modular masterpiece enables it. Ivan Zhao is currently reading Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang (Goodreads Author) bookshelves: currently-reading Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Sep 30, 2021 10:35AM See all 11 books that Ivan is reading rss Ivan's Recent Updates Biography of Ivan Pavlov, Father of Classical Conditioning. The tones are neutral and warm. Notion does this in a couple of ways: 1) It brings all your work into one space so you can close all the many apps and tabs youve been using, and work alongside your team in the same spot, and. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion . Why would I do that? How do you answer cynicism with curiosity? Zhao sees Last as his product co-founder and Kothari as his business co-founder. So the product side of Notion is four people or five people. So thats one thing. Microsoft Office did that in the 90s. Without understanding what youre trying to do, adding more people will actually slow you down. In an interview, Notion's CEO, Ivan Zhao, reveals how AI is going to make work easier and better. It didnt work because the product was not understandable for most people., I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere. And you can filter it to see just your tasks or a colleagues tasks. And to stretch what money they had left, theyd moved from San Francisco to Kyoto, Japan, which was less than half as expensive. I marveled to myself, Who is this man? He is so discerning and so curious. Herzberg liked Zhao so much that she downloaded Notion immediately. Those people have taste; they just dont have good tools., Around this time, Zhao read a 1962 paper by Engelbart called Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework that crystallized his thinking. They did this, Zhao says, by building relationships with power users. Its tools help office workers, now quarantined in their homes, work together more seamlessly. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates they copied Xerox PARC. Movies. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million. Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion, shares the artistic vision behind his productivity startup's smashing success. Zhao started working on the first version of Notion while day-jobbing at the ebook startup Inkling in San Francisco. That said, increasingly, teams need ways to work better together that dont require a ton of time spent in in-person meetings (which slows everyone down), and a way to keep communication focused and action-oriented. Software is a lot like that. Financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us, said Akshay Kothari, Notions head of operations. Every day of the pandemic added more users, and they were running out of database storage. To make Notion more competitive, the company recently acquired the calendaring company Cron, the software-building company Flowdash, and the cloud integration and workflow automation platform Automate.io. On the west coast of Canada he learned English from watching Spongebob Squarepants., Zhao attended the University of British Columbia, and, figuring he already understood computer science, focused on cognitive science and art, having picked up photography his senior year of high school. The site was down for four nerve-wracking hours. About Ivan Zhao: Ivan is a senior at Brown University studying Applied Math and Computer Science. Per Vulture, she grew up as "a rebellious child and a poor student," but her father become a top executive at successful steel company Shougang Group. But within a year or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team. We want Notion to be as light and simple as you want to be, with the power to do complex things only if and when you want to. Related Investments Aliases N/A. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Career Achievements Investments We think the pendulum is swinging back to a bundled solution. Transformative collaboration for all the work you do. Inside Design: How do you stop the undeniable and neverending pressure for you guys to raise more money, go hire a hundred people, to expand? He has over 320 original manuscripts published in . So they called Sarah Cannon, an investor at Index Ventures who had been courting Notion for over a year. Theyre all kind of ugly, right? He made maybe five websites. Ivan Zhao is Founder at Notion. 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